LIFE SUPPORT

 

Every day I take up my tools

and each day I resist writing

elegy; there are, the news service says,

whale sharks and manatees

washing up dead on the shores of Florida,

where I spent the best years of my youth. Ninety per cent

of the emperor penguins are gone, and slow lorises

have been decimated, too. A fire storm so huge

it opened up a vacuum in its centre has flattened

Redding, California. Athens has burned, and this time

not from war. Forty thousand fruit bats perished

on their roosts when the temperature rose to forty-five degrees

centigrade.  The world is not itself. I struggle

to describe the world as it was when I grew up in it,

the lizards and beetles, ants and ant lions that scurried

away each time a leaf was turned, the sound

of frogs and cicadas so dense the air

had a feeling like warm milk, the birds everywhere,

their eyes and swift movements

a rich text among the wires and shrubs

and skies. And fish, and crabs; the shallows bright

with them. All of this gone silent, or thinned

to a few broken words, a rough note, an acronym.

But ten per cent, I tell myself, are left, and the

red woods and saguaro have not died, yet;

                                                                          I will not stand

over the world speaking last rites. 

I will take the world we wounded

in my arms. I will bring hands and breath

to it and every medicine. I will call

the doctors in, tell them,

as if we need telling,

save her, save him,

save them.